Each person privately fears their true indifference being detected by others

Evidence

Virginia Woolf (1938, 109) comments on the thoughts of a family listening to the paterfamilias expound on politics: “All of them bending themselves to listen thought: ‘Pray heaven that the inside of my mind may not be exposed,’ for each thought, ‘The others are feeling this. They are outraged and indignant with the government about the fishermen. Whereas, I feel nothing at all.’” — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 963

Categorization

• XREF: Illustrates the observability substrate Hardin’s trust model runs on — the inward masking that collapses in Saramago’s blindness, where nothing can be exposed or concealed. — connects to: Identity anxiety is really worry about being valued by others — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 290
• FICTION: The family around the paterfamilias, each masking their private emptiness while assuming everyone else genuinely cares, is a vivid scene for a story about pretense and detection.